Can You Deny A Villain Their "Rights"?

[Grimmsister]

theWatcher : “So of course the movie is about two chicks fighting over shoes. Shoes that rightfully belong to the West Witch.”

Hehe!! 😀 funny stuff.. Never thought of it that way. That totally cleans the wicked witch of any alogations of wrongdoing. Being denied shoes will turn any girl green and render them irresponsible for their actions 😉

[timespacer]

slurpeez108 wrote:

RumplesGirl wrote: Think about John Locke and his “Second Treatise” and the idea of the social contract. There Locke spells out that government gets its right to rule from the goverened and that it cannot infringe on the natural rights of its citizens. (If someone has a better explanation, give it cause The Enlightenment is about 1600 years AFTER my area of expertise). I would say being eaten takes away my natural right to live.

The idea of a social contract is pretty much as you describe. A government agrees to protect the human rights of its citizens while those citizens abide by the country’s laws. So every citizen has certain rights (e.g. the Bill of Rights), that same citizen cannot go around infringing on the rights of others (e.g. it is illegal to kill another citizen unless in self defense). So, citizens give up certain liberties (like not having to pay taxes), but in exchange are guaranteed to have certain rights protected. If, however, the government fails to protect the agreed upon rights, or if its laws infringe upon those rights already established in the written constitution, then the people have the right to dissolve that government (leave the social contract) in favor of a new one.

Thanks. I thought I knew what I was talking about. Good to know I haven’t totally forgotten “modern” European history, try as I might.

 

This is what I love about good drama – it makes us ask important questions. And I love any conversation where Locke comes up!  Of course, we have to decide whether we are talking about what is “right” (i.e. legal) by the laws of the Enchanted Forest , which is essentially a feudal society about 1000 years before the Enlightenment or what modern reason tells us is correct. After all, modern reason based upon the Enlightenment would tell us that Snow and Charming have no more authority to rule the kingdom than does Regina – nobody voted for any of them. Or, to quote Monty Python, “You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!”

[Keb]

Re the necklace: Snow summoned Rumple INTENDING to pay whatever price Rumple would have asked of Charming. We don’t know precisely what Rumple may or may not have told/given Charming to make Excalibur happen, but there had to be a bit more than we saw for Charming to come up with the idea and make the sword.

So while he phrased it as wasting his time, I think he had a legit claim to the necklace, even if he thought the whole thing silly.

And, like almost always with him, he gave them choices. She chose to pay Charming’s price, whatever it was; she paid something.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[TheWatcher]

Also, just a bit more clarification. I’m just saying that in some instances, the villains are within their rights. Ursula is free to rule her kingdom how she sees fit and if Trident doesn’t like it, he could have just gone to war to conquer her kingdom rather than just snatch her crown and kick her out. Cinderella should have just read the darn contract before agreeing to it and can’t get mad over agreeing to something she didn’t take the five minutes to understand, and the witch of the west, yes a bit more tricky, SHOULD have been given the shoes, but defeated when she actually tried something evil. That’s what I feel v.v

"I could have the giant duck as my steed!" --Daniel Radcliffe
Keeper Of Tamara's Taser , Jafar's Staff, Kitsis’s Glasses , Ariel’s Tail, Dopey's Hat , Peter Pan’s Shadow, Outfit, & Pied Cloak,Red Queen's Castle, White Rabbit's Power To World Hop, Zelena's BroomStick, & ALL MAGIC

[Phee]

Ursula is free to rule her kingdom how she sees fit and if Trident doesn’t like it, he could have just gone to war to conquer her kingdom rather than just snatch her crown and kick her out.

But if a ruler, even if they’re a rightfully instated ruler according to the laws of their country, is terrorising their people, does that mean we just say, “Well, they’re within their rights.” Consider North Korea. The rest of the world knows that North Koreans suffer under their ruler, but there’s no easy solution to put a stop to it, and it’s incredibly sad and frustrating because the North Koreans should be able to be free from tyranical rule. Should the rest of us put it in the too hard basket and just let Kim Jong-un go on his merry way, abusing his people?

If there’s a way to stop a dictator without the need for a war that could cost the lives of thousands, wouldn’t it be a preferable option to just take the dictator out? Now, if Triton was just as evil as Ursula, then we’d all be crying foul because he’s not helping people with his action of deposing his sister, but the fact is he was a goodie, trying to ensure the security and safety of Ursula’s subjects.

We have modern day dictators who rule in a way that sees their people abused and killed, (Idi Amin, crackpot dictator of Uganda whose rule resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, was even rumoured to have been a cannibal, just like Ursula), and we see other countries invading to try and put a stop to it, and we see civil uprisings, both things which costs many lives. If they’d just been able to get in and knock off Saddam sooner, and take out his closest supporters, then a whole lotta war and death may have been avoided. (Yes I realise that’s a completely unrealistic view, but I’m trying to compare real life situations to idealised Disney situations here.)

So if Ursula’s ruling with dark magic and wantonly killing and eating her sentient being subjects, and if Triton can put an immediate stop to that and free her people by taking her crown, then I think he’s in the right to go ahead and do just that. Sucks to be Ursula, but it sucked worse for the people who lived in daily fear of ending up as her lunch.

[timespacer]

Ursula is free to rule her kingdom how she sees fit and if Trident doesn’t like it, he could have just gone to war to conquer her kingdom rather than just snatch her crown and kick her out. Cinderella should have just read the darn contract before agreeing to it and can’t get mad over agreeing to something she didn’t take the five minutes to understand, and the witch of the west, yes a bit more tricky, SHOULD have been given the shoes, but defeated when she actually tried something evil. That’s what I feel v.v

 

I must respectfully disagree. No monarch is automatically entitled to rule. I’m at a disadvantage here because I’ve never seen the movie, but the authority to rule can only come from the people and if the people are being terrorized by Ursula, it’s a safe bet they never authorized her to do that.  As for Triton’s response, how is it better to slaughter thousands of innocent peasants who probably don’t even want to leave their homes to fight a war, than to take action which only harms the tyrant herself?  Of course, as I said in a previous message, if you’re talking about what was “right” by the standards of medieval law, that’s a very different question than what is right by modern standards.  To be clear, I’m trying to apply modern (i.e. post-Enlightenment) standards.

 

As for Cinderella, I do agree with Watcher that she should have read the contract and she has no grounds for complaining. Caveat Emptor. The only exception I can think of, which doesn’t really apply here since Rumple never really wanted the baby in the first place, would arise in a case where the deal would have caused future hardship to the baby, who is an unwilling participant in the contract. As Thomas Jefferson said, “The Earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.” So Cinderella has no power to make a deal that would in any way bind the baby’s future actions. People have a right to keep a child or to give it up for adoption and no one  (except Rumplestiltskin!) can foresee the future and know which choice will be best for the baby in the long run. So giving up the baby is one thing, but Cinderella couldn’t make a deal that would for instance, sell the baby into life-long slavery, just as your great-gradparents couldn’t take out a loan with the promise “Our great-gradchildren will repay it.”

[kfchimera]

I agree with Phee and Timespacer, except on the contract.  Buyer should be aware, but there is also a concept that when the power of the parties bargaining are so far apart that no fair bargain is struck, that a contract is void as unconscionable.  I think selling babies qualifies.

Then there’s the argument that Rumple owed Cinderella. Cinderella would have had her wish granted by her FGM, and she did not because Rumple killed the FGM.  Then he tried to offer her a deal to obtain it instead.  The logic of magic is tricky, but I think Cindy actually earned a wish in the fairy-magic-rationing system as they do not appear to everyone who needs help.  So Rumple stole her wish, then bargained it back to her, possibly at a much higher price (We’ll never know, depends on how sneaky fairies are in this world!).

So anyway, I think Cinderella /Ashley had lots of reasons to break that deal with Rumple which may be why BF helped her, and they tried to imprison Rumple.   Or BF is just sneaky!

 

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

[TheWatcher]

You guys are some smart cookies 😉 I was rereading this thread just now…. Smart cookies, indeed

"I could have the giant duck as my steed!" --Daniel Radcliffe
Keeper Of Tamara's Taser , Jafar's Staff, Kitsis’s Glasses , Ariel’s Tail, Dopey's Hat , Peter Pan’s Shadow, Outfit, & Pied Cloak,Red Queen's Castle, White Rabbit's Power To World Hop, Zelena's BroomStick, & ALL MAGIC

[Author]

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